anxiety in children

Do you enable your teenager’s poor behavior?

A woman I know named Mary had a teen son with anxiety issues.  Things escalated with him and he began to refuse to go to school. Eventually, he was placed in an outpatient program through a psychiatric hospital and also attended group sessions with other anxious kids.  His life improved and he returned to school.  However, a few months later he began skipping school again. The woman decided to get some help for herself.  After learning some important things she began to realize that she had been contributing to her son’s anxiety issues. Mary was able to see that she had always seen her son as ‘fragile’ and treated him that way. She had ‘let him off the hook’ over and over again throughout his life, thinking he was incapable of being responsible, towing the line, learning from his mistakes. Her vision of him was a weak one, and it was very perceptible to him and others. Therefore, his vision of himself was a weak one, creating lots and lots of anxiety within his psyche.